Elephants Are Able To Sing Like Humans

Elephants “sing” like humans but at a frequency so low we can’t hear them, scientists have claimed. Researchers have found that elephants use an ultrasound rumble, often too low for humans to hear, to keep the herd together and for males to find mates. It allows the animals to communicate over distances of up to six miles.

Experts had wondered whether, like a cat’s purr, elephant infrasound was generated by muscular ‘twitching’ movements of the vocal cords.

Instead, it turns out the elephant sounds are made purely by air being blown through the larynx, or voice box, as in the case of a human singer. The German team carried out laboratory tests on a larynx removed from an African elephant that had died naturally at a Berlin zoo.